Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday April 13, 2011 @04:41PM
from the fancy-name-for-break-room dept.

CWmike writes "The US Census Bureau is in the midst of a tech makeover following criticism of its technology deployments leading up to the 2010 Census, ranging from problems with its payroll processing system to its handhelds. The problems resulted in soaring costs and caustic criticism from lawmakers. The makeover aims to consolidate operations as well as enable the bureau's IT staff to be more creative and inventive. One effort includes establishing a place for its IT staff to generate ideas and test technologies. The Center for Applied Technology, as it's been named, will serve 'as a focal point for bringing entrepreneurial-minded staff, emerging technologies, and pressing business problems facing the Census together,' said the agency, in response to written questions from Computerworld about the plans, following Grove's testimony. 'Once the physical space is redesigned, it will serve as an oasis that will inspire Census staff to think creatively at an enterprise level to solve some of the more pertinent issues facing the Bureau,' the agency said. The center 'employs a 'think tank' concept where Census staff can work directly with corporate leaders in technology, key members of other government agencies, and academia.'"

Apparently you have never worked with data. It's an incredibly creative process, especially when all answers are technically correct but only certain ones are more helpful, useful, or easily interpretable.

Data is not selectively chosen, solutions are based on empirical evidence among many other factors. George Box, one of the great statisticians of modern science explained, "all models are wrong, some models are useful". However, if you have no idea about statistics or inferential theories that underly modern science you can continue spouting nonsense. Let the adults finish this conversation.

However, if you have no idea about statistics or inferential theories that underly modern science...

Unfortunately, this is a discussion about the census, and the census is not based upon statistics, it is a ENUMERATION of the population. I.e., a COUNT. That is what the Constitution mandates; that is what should happen.

Apparently you have never worked with data. It's an incredibly creative process, especially when all answers are technically correct but only certain ones are more helpful, useful, or easily interpretable.

It's also about being able to work with a massively large data set in a reasonably efficient fashion. Technologies and code that work well for hundreds or thousands break down when you surpass 100 million. I speak from experience.

Just because you have a redesign of your interior does not mean that they'll be better enabled to "be more creative". I'd say quality assurance and constant retesting/redesign leading up to the next census will be much more beneficial.

Not necessarily. Functional ascetics are critical when it comes to organizational behaviors. For example, if you work in a startup company that requires quick decision-making and on the fly meetings and discussions to bounce ideas around, if your organization is build hierarchically with lots of cubicles, no open spaces, isolated rooms or floors that limit access to people or resources... it makes the job of every single worker much more difficult across many tasks.

Either that or it's a Boondogglus enormous. When I read "Census staff can work directly with corporate leaders in technology, key members of other government agencies, and academia", the first thing that came to mind is that the Census people in question will get to spend as much time as they want, respectively, (a) receiving Enterprise Ready Widget sales pitches, (b) schmooze with counterparts in other agencies, and (c) travel to universities in pretty places to do grant reviews.

No, it's because the News is no longer independent at any level. Corporations own it all. Fox News is just their bulldog, making the rest of them seem less ridiculously solicitous of plutocratic ideals.

The first thing to realize is that when the Census Bureau decided to go the route of a hand-held unit for field workers, the iPhone had not even been announced. The "smart" phones at that time were primitive. At that time (say, 2004), you could ASSUME that cell technology would march forward, but what platform do you develop software for? Who knows what the winner will be in six years? No iPhone yet, no Android yet. Blackberry was the biggest thing going at this time. Would they still be in business i

The only problem is that your method will miss those without an address, those who moved, those who got married and changed their name, and so on. I serously doubt anyone has even close to accurate data on where people live in this country. And the return rate on most forms is dismal; in the single digits. So if you want the census to be near-accurate you need to have people out there counting. Also, since political power is divied up on the basis of census data, you want a process that's verifieable.

I worked for the 2010 census. I consider it just a make work project. The vast majority of my time was spent trying to find someone to tell me a particular address did not have anyone living in it on April 1, 2010. They were not computerized enough to have a list of all addresses and their owners. I would think that the census could get a list of the owners and their phone numbers even if it is a cell or an out of state number. That information would have greatly helped in accomplishing my job. I woul

How come I think that the technology coming out of this place will never see the light of day:

The Center for Applied Technology, as it's been named, will serve 'as a focal point for bringing entrepreneurial-minded staff, emerging technologies, and pressing business problems facing the Census together'

Well, one manager folk told me and my manager in a call, when we asked about some features: "We are currently implementing plans to size the effort."

How come I think that the technology coming out of this place will never see the light of day:

Because they are trying to design systems that will be used in ten years (nine) in a technological world that changes on a yearly basis and the lifecycle of an electronic product is six months or less.

In historical terms, they'll be producing a system that runs great on a Palm Pilot when the rest of the world is adopting iPads.

The Center for Applied Technology, as it's been named, will serve 'as a focal point for bringing entrepreneurial-minded staff, emerging technologies, and pressing business problems facing the Census together'

Well, one manager folk told me and my manager in a call, when we asked about some features: "We are currently implementing plans to size the effort."

Hey. That's not even thinking out of the box, let alone thinking creatively at the enterprise level. Your organization should redesign the physical sp

I worked on the 2010 Census as your typical door-to-door person. From the bottom up, it's unorganized. There's reams of paper for each task and work is somewhat uncoordinated. Despite what some may think, the people who worked it were generally capable and intelligent, but the lack of technology and stacks of paperwork were just begging for errors (which occured often).
I wouldn't go so far as to say the collection process should be abolished in favor of statistical inference, but it could be done far m

Congress appropriated $14.7 billion over 12 years for this year’s headcount. Preparations for the 2010 count began in 1999 with early planning meetings, but more than half of the money was spent this year.

The 2010 Census was still the most expensive in American history, but census budgets have climbed every decade since 1950 as the American population and number of households increases. The Census Bureau managed to return $305 million from a $7 billion total budget in 2000.

I would say the soaring costs came from doubling the cost to do the exact same operation with 10 years worth of newer technology to assist them.

I'm not sure why it should cost anything in the range of billions. You know (roughly) how many properties there are in the US. You have a census form delivered to each property, whether occupied or not, to be mailed back. There's 360 million people in the US, so in the worst possible case you've 360 million forms. You can't have any more than that and the chances are you'll have about a fifth since the average family size is about 5. That's 72 million forms. It should be possible to have the key information

Australian censuses are the easiest to fill of any country I've lived in, the information is of very high quality, and the coverage seems to be exceptionally good. If any nation wanted to rework their system, I'd consider it to be one of the best examples of how to do it right - or, at least, as right as censuses ever get (they're never going to be perfect). The UK system comes a close second. The black hole at Cygnus X1 is second to last, followed by the US.

Who cares if they "receive mail"? I'm not talking about posting them the form. You have a map, you have a property marked there as being built, you push the census form under the door.

Who cares if they are a "citizen"? A census is about ensuring that resources go where they are needed. The resources a person needs doesn't change according to their citizenship status. A person doesn't suddenly stop needing air, food and water because they're not "legit". The absolute last thing you want is for people to excl

Ever notice not everyone sends back their forms? Also, did you ever notice that there are lots of addresses that don't actually tell you where the house is ("RR 2 Box 3")? You clearly don't understand the complexities involved.

Oh, probably better than you do. People have failed to return census forms for almost two centuries. So? Why should that matter? In reality, the only ones who give a damn at the individual level are genealogists a century later. You'd need more than 50% to not return the form before it would make any practical difference at the statistical level. And if that many can't be bothered to post the form back, it's probably an area not worth knowing about.

You'd need more than 50% to not return the form before it would make any practical difference at the statistical level.

Except that the census isn't designed solely for macro-level statistical information. One of the most important roles of a census is determining a city/county/state's population, which is used to allocate funding, and determine the number of representatives in the US House and state houses/senates, which does have a significant impact on the makeup of those bodies.

I live in the DC area and I was offered the job of lead architect/consultant overseeing the building of the datacenter for the 2010 census. In fact, I was offered this job six times in various forms over the last 6-8 years. I turned it down because I already have a good job. Not to mention the long ass commute out to the boonies of MD everyday. From what I understand, they had a lot of trouble finding good talent for the job.

Cut out the PHB's they get in the way of generating ideas and makeing test technologies take along time and BAN golf course meetings as they just lead to sale men selling stuff to bosses who have no clue about IT.

How about we just fix and then test the Census PDAs we already bought. We had to go back to paper and pencil for the Census because some Goverment contractors couldn't deliver a PDA that took surveys. If the government gets working on the problem RIGHT NOW, maybe we'll get workingPDAs in time for the next census. Oh, here's a tip order new batteries no earlier then a year in advance.

I was a manager in a Census office. The technical desktop support was OK. But they built an in-house system to track all the data input and it never worked, ever.

We ended up, in many cases, putting data into Access DBs which would be downloaded by HO overnight. Complete and utter flustercluck.

I spend hours writing up a report, as did all the managers, detailing everything that went wrong. Funny thing is, the people that had worked the prior Census said it was the same issues. Guess that report wont do much

Everyone was very hard working, at least in the San Francisco office (we had the best pay in the area), most of us had been unemployed for a long time and were extremely grateful for the steady paycheck. But office morale rode the tide of PBOCS crashes. Not just the servers were bad, but the client software's semi-random glitches were also revealed when server communications were too slow or lost en route.

I for one wondered why the government failed to do proper server load testing far ahead of an operat